Ian Stark of Vennard Gardens is waging a one-man war on obesity and welcomes feedback or debate on his perhaps provocative theories. Here, with a nod to Sir Isaac Newton, he observes the blackbirds who feed on his apple tree.

[This article has been posted by a blog admin on behalf of Ian Stark.]

A proper Eureka Moment!

I have a very small apple tree in my back garden which each year gets loaded (usually around 1,000) with cooking apples. I distribute with difficulty most of the apples, but this year there were well over 1,000 and I left over 100 on the tree and on the ground. While eating my breakfast one morning, I watched a blackbird eating from one of the apples on the ground. It just ate what it wanted then flew away.

Most of us have heard of the last apple that fell to the ground and, according to legend, led to a Eureka Moment that changed science in respect of gravity. Well – the bird on the ground was a very real eureka moment for me. One thought led to another and an especially good feeling went through my body. Think of all birds, light, thin with their little hearts beating 19 to the dozen. Except that is, the birds that walk on the ground – turkeys and hens to name but two.

You see, (or I hope you soon will) for the past four years I have been writing a book that goes slightly askew from current advice. I completed the book, checked all the facts and science, found definitive proof and arranged for the book’s publication. I had written in my book that 90% of the nutrients in apples are sugars! (Check nutrients online.) Also, that sugars are the fuel most used in fast exercise – without the food being stored as body fats before use. This is a key!

Sorry about that, it was such a pleasant little story and I’ve just turned most of you off, but please bear with me and keep an open mind if you can. This leads to better lives for all of us and hugely better for some of us!

So what happens to birds that stay on the ground? They can’t do fast movements and they get heavy therefore can barely fly. Cheetahs and greyhounds burst with fast energy but strangely are never heavy or fat! Elephants and Hippos don’t often use fast movements, grazing’s their way and heavy they stay.

Wrongly, I’d guess, this triggered my brain. I had completed a book that I had been writing as a hobby. However I had based my original conclusion that fast exercise (not food or lack of food) was the key to reducing weight gain and therefore obesity and Type 2 diabetes. I arrived at this by observation and the science of how the body works (my idea had formed over 40 years) and I was happy that my book showed this.

However, I had found no science that could verify completely that obesity would be reduced by people taking fast exercise in any given population (although my belief was that it would reduce obesity). Until, that is, I found a relatively new study of 132,793 British women which looked at how they had been living and this proved conclusively that sufficient fast exercise does make a population thinner! Look up – http://jech.bmj.com/content/68/Suppl_1/A23.1.abstract (“Physical activity in relation to body size and composition in women in UK Biobank”) and argue with it if you can!

My conclusion is that if anyone takes a lot of fast exercise – they won’t get fat. Those who take a moderate but very regular amount of fast exercise will need to keep an eye on when they eat and what they eat—and watch that they don’t take very large amounts at one sitting. Those who only take minimum exercise will be extraordinarily lucky not to put on gradually increasing amounts of weight, as well as watching when, what, and how they eat. So there you are:

A bird on the ground,
not looking around.
Has led to a thought,
that hasn’t been taught.